I'll Take The Rain
by Jane McCartney
Summary: W/X friendship. Post-'Grave'. A true friend will be the one to point out to you the hard truths, instead of the comforting lies. [Complete]
1. Ashtrays And Ashes

Title: I'll Take The Rain  
  
Author: Jane McCartney  
  
Disclaimer: Yeah, right, let's go through this again. None of these characters are mine, but Joss's and the other guys whose names I don't know. They're geniuses, I'm not. So don't sue me, I'm just having some fun by borrowing on poetic license.  
  
Classification: A W/X friendship two-chapter thing, that takes place several months after 'Grave'.  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Feedback: I'd kill for it! Okay, maybe not. But I still love those reviews... please, send them to me!  
  
E-mail: janemccartney@bol.com.br  
  
Acknowledgments: Forever Theo. Really, I could marry this guy. [Theo's note: Not if she ever met me] His help is not only important, but also essential. Without him, every work of mine would be a big page of semi- illegible English. And my dear reviewers too, as always! You guys keep me going.  
  
Author's note: I'm really beginning to believe I'm some sort of manic- depressive, because every fic I write seems to, at some point, turn angsty somehow! Gee, Jane, get some humor in your writing, woman...  
  
Summary: W/X friendship. Post-'Grave'. A true friend will be the one to point out to you the hard truths, instead of the comforting lies.  
  
***  
  
"That's, uh, that's kinda nice," Willow stammered unconvincingly.  
  
Her best childhood friend sent her an annoyed glance. "Gee, thanks for the convincing factor of honesty here, Wills. Now, I think I can pretty much just go and kill myself."  
  
The redhead cringed in guilt, feeling much like a child getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She paused thoughtfully for a second, and then finally confessed, "Right. It's horrible then. No; awful, detestable, horrific. Yeah, it's absolutely hideous!" she cheered triumphantly.  
  
"OK, there's also something called too much honesty," Xander hammered back with an awkward grin.  
  
"Oh," Willow blurted out, blushing at this. "Gotcha," she offered a farfetched and nervous laugh.  
  
"My skill as an artist totally, completely sucks," the dark-haired young man admitted defeat, letting his head fall flat on his hands and sinking himself into a sea of self-pity.  
  
"No, no, you do have skills as an artist. They're just like... well, deeply hidden," the former witch said tentatively, frowning at her final words.  
  
Xander cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Deeply hidden?"  
  
"Very deeply hidden," the girl grinned in defeat. "It's just, you suck at pottery," she agreed, sending a grimacing glance to an undecipherable something that was supposed to be an ashtray. "Big time."  
  
"And that makes it twice you make me feel like plunging a knife deep into my heart during one night, thank you very much," Xander mocked her, his head shaking in his hands as his dark locks of hair intertwined between his fingers.  
  
"My bad," Willow apologized. "But you, you can do wonders with wood and nails, you know," she started to explain her theory. "And if anyone ever gave me only that, I'd have pretty much nothing but loose boards and nails."  
  
Xander jerked his head up again. "Great, then I can send Anya a window maybe," he grunted sarcastically.  
  
"Hey, don't get all snappy on me, I'm just trying to help," something in Willow's voice told Xander she sounded offended. The guilt was instant, brisk and overwhelming.  
  
"You're right, I'm sorry Wills," Xander quickly amended his position.  
  
"I know," she replied with a gaze of worry and suspicion. "But Anya doesn't even smoke, Xander," the redhead said helpfully. "And besides, you don't have to make her something, we could have just gone to the mall."  
  
"Yeah, but I..." Xander sighed. "I thought I should show her I care. Make her something-"  
  
"Personal," Willow completed timely and emphatically. "I know you wanna make up for your, uh, little blunder with her," she practically whispered the last few words, always careful and on guard. "But gifts won't do that for you."  
  
The two long-time friends looked at the still structure, an apparently wet and undeniably unsuccessful work of clay that was supposed to be recognized as something at least resembling an ashtray.  
  
But the sad fact was that it could more easily pass as anything, other than the ashtray it was supposed to be.  
  
They chuckled, and Xander shook his head one more time. "And so we're back again with the bit about plunging a knife deep into my heart, full-force," he lamented in a mocking voice.  
  
"It's just that... it's been almost six months now. I... I kinda think I miss her. OK, I know I do, all right? Maybe it's because I feel bad for leaving her at the altar, I don't know," Xander then said, obviously confused and babbling.  
  
He quickly got up from his chair, and grabbed a slice of slightly cold pizza inside the box on the kitchen table. The redhead simply snorted.  
  
"What?" the young man demanded with a shrug, the pizza in his hand ready to feed his hunger, and only inches away from his mouth.  
  
"Oh, nothing really," Willow hissed, her troubled expression contradicting her words of being problem-free.  
  
Xander eyed her suspiciously. "If it was really nothing then you wouldn't say that it's nothing, but you do have this 'it's everything but I'm saying it's nothing' look on your face, and I'm very sure that I'm babbling like a idiot here but making some sense nevertheless..."  
  
Willow sighed. Xander knew it, it was the 'it's everything but I'm saying it's nothing ' choice after all. And something that gave him the chills was telling him that this was a hell of a big 'everything'.  
  
"Do you really wanna know what I think?" the red-haired girl asked, her face seeming so challenging for an instant that Xander almost backed away.  
  
"I'm afraid that either answer I can give ya, I'm gonna regret later," the young man shook his head in anticipation.  
  
"I just thought my best friend was being incredibly and amazingly stupid, but that's all. My mistake, I guess," she finished in sarcasm.  
  
"Oookay," the young man backed away, returning the cold slice of pizza to its box. "Danger, Will Robinson! I mean â€" danger, Xander Harris!" he mocked her tentatively.  
  
"I just think you won't win Anya back with any windows, pop-culture references or, uh, some alien representation of an ashtray," Willow said, the flood of adrenaline starting to rush through her veins â€" which caused her cheeks to blush deeply.  
  
"She slept with Spike again," Xander said sharply, his face quickly becoming devoid of any emotions but affliction and hurt.  
  
"But you slept with Amy too!" Willow snapped all of a sudden, pointedly. "And Carla the waitress, from that new cafÃ© on the corner that has horrible food and only two kinds of coffee plus no cappuccino? And Linda, the bartender? Ruth, from the Bronze? And don't you even think I didn't find out about that brunette girl, the one where you didn't even know her name," Willow retorted piercingly, seemingly ready to recite a countless list of his dalliances if she had to.  
  
"She taped it!" Xander snapped back.  
  
"Anya was hurt!" Willow retorted pointedly. "You left her on her wedding day at the last moment, you confirmed every fear she's had for more than a millennium, a fear that she thought she could overcome with your love!"  
  
Xander continued as if the redhead's words of rebuttal hadn't affected him (even though they had), "And she made sure I saw it! Do you have any idea how painful that was? I can still puke right now simply thinkin' about the whole freaking thing, 'cause it's like permanently stuck in my mind and I just know I won't ever get rid of the images in my brain!"  
  
"And all those girls were way, way after we broke up. Plus the brunette's name was Tina, by the way," he said self-righteously, an undeniable hint of sarcasm present in every word.  
  
"No, it so wasn't! Her name's Julia, she has two classes with me," the redhead rolled her eyes.  
  
"Oh. OK. Then I'll just have to make sure from now on, that any of my future one-night stands don't happen to attend college with my best friend, I guess heh," Xander jabbered fidgetily, his awkward muttering sounding incredibly more like a mental note than a actual retort.  
  
Willow sighed. "That's not the ordinary you, you know. The Xander I know, he'd never sleep with all those girls when he's in love with someone else."  
  
Xander raised an eyebrow. Willow blushed instantly.  
  
"That's not fair, we were kids then and technically we didn't sleep together," Willow started to babble nervously. "We were confused and..."  
  
"Willow?"  
  
"And really stupid, and there was the formal wear thing that, may I say, didn't really mean anything at all, and..." the redhead continued to jabber, seemingly unaware of Xander's previous interjection.  
  
The boy shook the girl softly, making her snap out of it. Willow stared at him thankfully.  
  
"I was, uh, I was kinda thinking about Faith," Xander admitted, scratching the top of his head, unaware of the exact reason that had made him feel so suddenly uncomfortable.  
  
"Right, of course, F-faith, naturally," Willow agreed hurriedly.  
  
"Faith?" she then blurted out, rather confused. "You weren't with anyone else when you slept with her," the girl reasoned, trying to ignore the pain this matter still brought to her heart.  
  
"But I wasn't in love with her either," Xander clarified. "And alright, maybe I wasn't in love with Ahn when we first-" he cleared his throat before continuing, "before we got to know each other better. But that was different, I wasn't in love with anyone else like in Faith's case."  
  
"Cordelia," Willow whispered, with a rather morose smile of remembrance.  
  
Xander sighed loudly, a troubled expression overtaking his features. "I really don't know," he confessed, and his red-haired friend immediately lifted her wide ocean-green eyes to stare at him.  
  
"B-buffy? I thought you were over her by then," the former witch said in a small voice. "I mean, after Cordelia and all. A helluva lot of time's passed since you had that crush on her, after all..."  
  
The dark-haired young man glanced at the redhead. Her shoulders seemed more slumped, he thought, and her cracking voice scared. He shivered absent- mindedly.  
  
"I wasn't talking about Buffy," Xander finally admitted.  
  
"There was another girl?!" Willow asked, a hint of hurt and confusion in her voice.  
  
Xander glanced at her, his face speaking volumes with his nervousness and agitation.  
  
The red-haired girl's ocean-green eyes grew ever wider. "Oh," she blurted out. "Oh..."  
  
***  
  
TBC, one more chapter.  
  
Pretty please, review me! It'll only cost a sec to you, but a world of yays to me! 


	2. Everything Goes

Title: I'll Take The Rain  
  
Author: Jane McCartney  
  
Disclaimer: Yeah, right, let's go through this again. None of these characters are mine, but Joss's and the other guys whose names I don't know. They're geniuses, I'm not. So don't sue me, I'm just having some fun by borrowing on poetic license.  
  
Classification: A W/X friendship two-chapter thing, that takes place several months after 'Grave'.  
  
Rating: PG13  
  
Feedback: I'd kill for it! Okay, maybe not. But I still love those reviews... please, send them to me!  
  
E-mail: janemccartney@bol.com.br  
  
Acknowledgments: Forever Theo. Really, I could marry this guy. [Theo's note: Not if she ever met me] His help is not only important, but also essential. Without him, every work of mine would be a big page of semi- illegible English. And my dear reviewers too, as always! You guys keep me going.  
  
Author's note: I'm really beginning to believe I'm some sort of manic- depressive, because every fic I write seems to, at some point, turn angsty somehow! Gee, Jane, get some humor in your writing, woman...  
  
Summary: W/X friendship. Post-'Grave'. A true friend will be the one to point out to you the hard truths, instead of the comforting lies.  
  
***  
  
They stayed in thick and utter silence for many fleeting seconds.  
  
"You mean..." Willow started to ask, and Xander nodded softly, his brown eyes averted from hers.  
  
"Oh," Willow repeated louder, suddenly feeling her mind fade into a world of daze and confliction.  
  
"Wills? Are you OK?" Xander asked, his voice showing he was going through a similar rush of emotions as his friend.  
  
"Yeah, I'm perfectly and absolutely peachy," the redhead chimed in, as her body told her its sudden need to sit down and take a deep, long breath.  
  
Willow eyed the nearby chair, but her fainting and stubborn body was caught in time by Xander's arms. He sent a worried glance to the petite girl.  
  
"I'm, I'm still peachy," the redhead insisted stubbornly. "Just a little blunty, that's all. I guess I'll just have to have a long conversation with my idiot legs, about the right and wrong time to decide to stop working on me."  
  
"Willow, sit down," Xander commanded her softly, as he supported his best friend's lanky frame on the chair.  
  
"I'm sorry," she sighed.  
  
"You don't have to be," the dark-haired young man sighed too. "That night with Faith, I was confused as hell. And with the big grand Apocalypse thing, I was hurt for being told by my friends to butt out."  
  
Willow tried to say something, but Xander didn't let her. "It's OK, you all had your reasons and it was a really long time ago now. And I really don't wanna rehash all that again, one tragedy at time here," he exaggerated in a half-mocking voice.  
  
Willow stayed silent, but her eyes showed him she wasn't happy with his decision and they'd certainly return to that topic later.  
  
Xander shuddered slightly at the memories of Jack O'Toole's gang, the bomb and the never-told tale of how he'd prevented them blowing up the high school; the very same night, the Sisterhood of Jhe had tried to open the Hellmouth.  
  
"But hey, the truth is, I was really conflicted for months. I mean, the thing with Cordelia â€" it was kinda like having a live grenade in your hands! Always fighting and making up, snapping at each other and making out in the broom closet, the screaming and kissing... well, you get the point I guess," Xander finished quickly with an awkward grin, rebuking himself when he saw Willow shiver in the chair, an uncomfortable look in her eyes.  
  
"I guess I did love Cordy, well â€" sorta. In our own weird way, we cared about each other a lot," Xander shrugged away the memories of the brunette girl.  
  
"But you, you had Oz. You loved him, not me. Not after sophomore year, at least. Maybe you thought you loved me before... And you were â€" are â€" my best friend. You've always been that, I guess."  
  
"Xander..."  
  
"I mean, Buff only came in later. And what we had, it was stupid and childish I guess. But I didn't... I mean, if I regret anything, it was that it hurt Oz and Cor. 'Cause I really still regret that! But sometimes, I wonder if it was just a case of bad timing... you and me, I mean. Us. As an item."  
  
After his little speech, perfectly suitable for one of Woody Allen's movies with its rambling and babbling and confused sentences, Xander stabbed the room with a nervous glance.  
  
Willow slowly raised her head. Xander noticed the tears falling perilously out of her ocean-green eyes.  
  
"Oh God, Wills, I'm so sorry," the dark-haired boy ran to her side, softly squeezing her hands into his.  
  
"No, p-please don't be," she retorted in a cracked and teary voice, drying the tears away from her face with the back of her hand.  
  
"I guess that, with everything you said, it makes two of us," Willow admitted softly. "Without Cordelia and with Oz instead, of course. I guess I just didn't know I was gay then, huh?" the redhead chuckled, a laugh almost lost between gasps and brand-new tears.  
  
Almost.  
  
Xander chuckled with her, feeling his eyes slowly forming unshed tears too.  
  
"You've got no idea how painful it was to see you on the street that night, with those bitches from the Sisterhood of Jhe trying to bring about the Apocalypse and all. But I meant what I said back then; I loved you, Xander. And I'm almost totally positive, that it was in a more-than-friends way."  
  
They exchanged a meaningful look before she continued, "But what with Oz dumping me, and Cordelia getting hurt when they found out about us that night Spike wanted me to do that spell for Drusilla... I couldn't do that to Oz, Xander, I just couldn't. It was too hard, and I loved him too, I really did. I owed him. Things were just too complicated already..."  
  
Xander looked down, and then back at her. He opened his mouth to say something, but Willow gently laid her finger on his lips to silence him.  
  
"And yet I kept wondering," the redhead whispered.  
  
For several seconds, the only sound in the room was the dripping water falling into the sink, in the nearby kitchen.  
  
Willow, almost completely rigid on the chair like a scared infant afraid of the big menacing world, and Xander by her side like her knight in tarnished armor; hands holding onto each other firmly yet gently, stares seeming to stick one to the other's like glue.  
  
"I loved her so much, Xander," Willow muttered in such a low voice that it'd have made anyone else wonder if she'd even said anything. But her dark- haired friend had heard her, because of their powerful ties of friendship and the unique connection between their souls.  
  
"I know, Wills. And I'm sure Tara knew it too," he said quietly, increasing the grip on her hand.  
  
"I don't know if I regret what I did to her killer," Willow whispered, anger seeming to join the pain and grief in her voice. "I do regret everything else I did... all the pain I caused, the magic, the end-of-the- world stuff â€" I really do regret everything else. But sometimes, I feel like I just can't regret what I did to Warren," the red-haired girl confessed hauntingly.  
  
Xander kept silent for a few seconds before calmly and decidedly saying, "I'm not sure about many things in my life right now, Wills. But if there's one thing I do know, it's that if I could ever get the chance to be in your place that day and erase the pain of that doubt, I'd do it in the blink of an eye."  
  
"Would you? Would you have killed Warren?" Willow asked him in a small and haunted voice.  
  
The young man saw the sorrow and the fear in her eyes. "It'd be so easy to say no, but-"  
  
"It'd also be so easy to say yes," Willow finished quietly for him.  
  
He half-snorted. "Right."  
  
"Xander?" the redhead asked weakly, the tears finally stopping abruptly to leave space for occasional sobs and pangs of distress.  
  
Their dark brown and ocean-green eyes met reassuringly.  
  
"Promise me one thing?" she requested, looking so fragile at that moment Xander had to control the urge to just hug her for endless hours.  
  
"Anything," he retorted firmly.  
  
"Don't ever leave me," Willow whispered.  
  
"Hey, I won't ever do that," the young man smiled, despite everything. "I promise."  
  
The petite young woman hugged him and they just stayed like that, never noticing the sound of dripping water in the kitchen sink or the thick cold chill from a sudden wind blowing against their bodies, from the open window.  
  
"And promise me just one more thing?" Willow asked, her voice muffled by her mouth against his large shoulder in their embrace.  
  
"You'll get that lame ass of yours in gear, and gather up the guts to talk to Anya? Because all you've talked about for these last two months is her name," the redhead inquired, sounding incredibly and suspiciously innocent to her best friend.  
  
"That's soundin' very 'Cordelia' of you, Wills," he grunted, and they both grinned.  
  
"Is that your final answer?" the petite redhead demanded.  
  
"Why? You don't think my idea of winning back a former vengeance demon's heart with some wannabe-ashtray is gonna work?" Xander said mockingly, as they pulled out of their hug but still stayed barely inches from each other.  
  
"Honestly? No. It pretty much sucks," Willow retorted with a wild grin, her red eyes looking the perfect contradiction.  
  
Xander chuckled, and shoved a lock of long red hair behind her ears. "You're amazing, y'know."  
  
She kept her smile, but now it was a contemplative and sadder one somehow, her eyes averting from his and seeming to find a new spot on the floor. "Sometimes I wonder-"  
  
"But mostly you just know," the young man cut her off and finished gently.  
  
Willow quickly raised her glance back to his, her eyes showing fear, love, fire and hope. "I'll always mean it, you know? I love you."  
  
He smiled. "I know, Wills. I love you too."  
  
***  
  
This is the end, folks.  
  
Pretty please, review me! It'll only cost a sec to you, but a world of yays to me! 


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